THE MOST POWERFUL SHAMAN: About creation and transformation of
mythology in native societies on the Ucayali river (Peruvian amazon)
Introduction
The title mentions a “shaman”, although in south america there do not exist any shamans,
despite many ethnologists who still use this term and introduced it in the region, derived from
Mircea ELIADE´s (1951) well-meant intention to find global congruencies of “shamanism”.
Here it is but a pointer towards an early reinterpretation of western items in Indian society:
some local healer-witches1 now regard themselves as “shamans”, though literally they aren´t.
The Native Indians of the Peruvian Amazon region, in their total count of probably more
than 250.000 (MINSA 2002:8f), live nowadays in different degrees of non-contact, contact,
interrelation or assimilation with the Peruvian interpretation of western global society. There
are probably 72 different ethnic groups still being self-conscious in the region (ORTIZ
RESCANIERE 2001:48). The present paper will concentrate on the Shipibo-Konibo, a big group
living on the main Amazon tributary Ucayali.
The terms referred to in this paper result mainly from experiences of the author, living
highly integrated with Shipibo people for four years2. The informal interview, the memories of
what the Indians asked the author and what they told him, sometimes helped by cautious
questioning, build the database. The interviewed people are mainly bilingual teachers,
traditional healer-witches and casual visitors coming from different regions and ethnic groups.
Life in the villages
The Shipibo are famous throughout tourists and ethnologists because of the unique
geometric designs in their art and their great skill in traditional healing, phytomedicine and
magical activities. They retain their art and ethnic identity, living mainly in native communities
in voluntary separation from Peruvian mestizos. In the villages many women (but usually never
men) can be seen wearing traditional clothing and the Shipibo-Konibo tongue is used in all
everyday-conversations, even in school, because bilingual teaching is common.
There are about 120 Shipibo-Konibo native communities. In its centre most villages
contain a communal assembly house, a radio communications service, a primary school and an
evangelic church. In bigger villages there also are secondary school, medical post, shops and
bars, mostly with television and video, a satellite telephone and communal storehouses. In the
biggest downriver community, Pahoyan, these days a computer centre with public internet
cabins is being installed.
Shipibo daily life nowadays mainly hangs in the vacuum space between traditions and
western post modernity. While a main part of the now over 40-year old men carry on fishing,
hunting and cultivating land, and the elder women work in the fields, do housework and
produce handicraft, in the younger population segment a significant shift to mestizo-like
1
lifestyle can be observed and a new orientation to go on studying, journeying and joining
political forces arises.
Usually young Shipibo know what is the internet and they try to get access to it (what can
be very difficult because of the medieval, river-based infrastructure of the region ). Most of
them affirmed that they consider it as a useful educational source and want to find new,
international friends accessing the internet3. They also told me they liked the games and
enjoyed porno graphical contents.
Most elder people, on the contrary, find the IT very suspicious and consider them
somehow dangerous, mainly in naive Christian semantics: for example, the introduction of the
computerized national identification document, which has to be carried by every Peruvian,
already produced fear when in the many numbers printed on it the sequence “666” appeared4,
Many elders think that the internet is diabolic, sealed with the number of the beast, and will
subdue “original” Indian intentions.
Constipation theories can be heard from both older and younger people. They mainly refer
to the white people (especially US-Americans) as evil and engaged in a fight against the Indian
people, trying to convert them into working slaves, and – worst of all – intent to steal the
Shipibo culture5. Global political events like 9/11 or the US and Britain bombarding
Afghanistan or Iraq are included there as confirming examples. The Natives identify
themselfes solidarily with other victims.
Shipibo-Konibo myths
Analysing Shipibo history (TOURNON 2001:21ff), we suppose that there was pre-colombian
contact with the andean Kechua peoples, commonly called the Incas, but there is little
evidence. Anyway, the Shipibo consider the Inca as their culture-bringer and there are many
relates about him and his deeds in mythical past. Most Shipibo myths and stories include
contact in any form, be it with the positive Inca, any other ethnic group, or even demons6.
Let us pick out two special aspects: first, in most relates the Inca is drawn in the shape of a
half-god, equipped with superior material culture and marvellous magical powers. Many
Shipibo believe until now, even teachers and educated people, that the Incas flew before the
Spanish invaders up some Ucayali tributaries, and established in those most remote places big
hidden cities with major (modern!) military defences and magic camouflage, waiting for the
right moment to beat back the invaders of old together with their Shipibo allies.
There are also some genesis related stories about the Inca shaping today’s life into its
current form: sometimes we can hear about the white man, the Shipibo, other Indians and
Peruvian mestizos (in descending order of respect!), as a whole created or transformed to by
the Inca. Usually the white man appears smartest or quickest and so gets away with the best
attributes. Other Indians and mestizos, however, represent the hierarchical basement, so the
Shipibo still have enough neighbours to look down on7.
Sometimes the white man is called wirákocha8, derived from the Kechua deity Huiracocha,
which underlines the hypothesis, that the white man is the Inca’s successor as superior human
being (in Shipibo point of view, of course).
2
Second, the other side is described in the many stories about the Píshtako9. Nowadays it is
being told that the Píshtako of old killed people who went alone into the woods by crushing the
victim’s head with a wooden mace, then sucked out all of his body’s fat, as a kind of
vampirism. The next stage of the Píshtako´s obvious technological progress was the use of a
mechanism that looks like a photographic camera and also produces a flash but instead of
capturing a picture it decapitates its victim. After killing, the face was cut off, also the genital
apparatus. Nowadays the Píshtako seduces his victim by promising him employment, but by
any means, once alone with him converts into killer, to drain out the fat and to cut off face,
genitals and any important organs.
It is surprising, how many first-hand eyewitnesses I know personally who insist having seen
human corpses hanging like slewn pigs in the cellars of Christian missions, tourist
establishments or factories, fat running down on them to be collected in containers. Most
Shipibo know some Píshtako by their names, mainly referring to US-American residents in
Pucallpa who work for missions or the drug eradication agency (DEA).
By the way, the Kechua word Huira-cocha means literally “fat-lagoon”.
Ayawaska and the new myths
In Native Indian life nearly all over the Amazon basin the drinking of the hallucinogenic
plant brew ayawaska10 has great influence on cosmology; most obvious in Shipibo culture,
where the main ethnic significant, the elaborate geometric designs called kené, has a close
relation to optical perception under the hallucinogen’s influence (GEBHART-SAYER 1985:12,
ILLIUS 1987:54ff).
During history the visions of the ayawaska drinking healer-witches, a very privileged group
within the Indian social sphere, had a high acceptance as statements of real truth, coming from
the world of spirits that was considered as superior than our world in everyday perception. So
the healer-witches´ orders, relates and suggestions formed the common worldview in many
ways11.
Nowadays the drastic effects of ayawaska on human psyche attract many tourists from
western countries in search for new experiences – and the Peruvians answer with broad offers
of “ayawaska tours”, “mystic tourism” or “shamanism workshops”.
Many Indians (and mestizos) work in touristic ayawaska sessions. Thus, foreign cultural
items are being introduced. Usually when Shipibo singers (healer-witches, applying their special
medical songs, equally as simple villagers) get recorded, they include in their songs remarkable
metaphors about the tape recorder, the fact that their voice will be carried away to distant
countries, or about the journey of the visitor, mentioning airplanes or big ships12. These
metaphors are frequently used, because they implicit a “powerful precedence”. Why?
The scientist
In their songs under ayawaska influence they mention words and symbols of (magical)
power, as to impress the audience or the ‘enemies’ they are fighting in their visions. Traditional
symbols for power are the anaconda (Shipibo: ronin), the black panther (wiso ino), the huge
3
lupuna tree (shono) or spiritual entities like the heavenly spirits (nai yoshinbo) or the wind masterhealer (niwe meraya), and many more.
In my recordings of Shipibo healer-witches I found many new words of power, mostly loan
words from Spanish, like gasolina, avión, soldados or even diós and Jesucristo13. Metaphoric
neologisms as mentioned above are applied regularly, also the remarkable nokon bewá mákina
(“my singing machine”), which symbolizes the animating force for their long, improvised
songs, replacing more traditional terms like yoshinbo imaŝhon (“imitating singing spirits”).
The spiritual entities also have got new loan-word names, like rios rokotorobo (“divine
doctors”), shitanabo jonibo (“gipsy men” – witches!), or the mighty sintíjiko (“scientist”).
Especially the latest caught my interest and I have asked many healer-witches, who could be a
sintíjiko. Although it seems to simply substitute the legendary master-healer meraya, it carries a
quality of “knowing how to manage the foreign/global world”. Unlike the meraya who knew
how to contact the animals, plants and neighbouring peoples, often singing in many different
indigenous languages, the sintíjiko is specialized in contact with westerners and their
technologies.
Feedback
One healer-witch told me about his (spiritual!) venture to New York, where he met mighty
doctors who had studied the sínsiya (“science”) and who cured with the help of huge and
complicated machines. He also told me, that the sínsiya can be learned by the means of long
“diets”, the traditional way the healer-witches apply to master their arts. He said he “dieted”
himself for three month together with a master sintíjiko before he came back to Yarinacocha.
Now the healer-witch´s patients who still mainly live within their ‘doctor´s’ social sphere
and understand the words of the songs, are left after a treatment with impressions that they
had been operated by “scientists” from New York or divine surgeons with huge x-raymachines, and that the singing healer was animated by some kind of song-producing engine,
while he washed the patient´s body (spiritually!) with chlorhydrate (rijíya) and airplane fuel.
These are extreme examples, but all of them I have heard from my native informants. The
mythology of the native people is still alive, although highly transformed, and we can point the
way and means of a new mythology.
Conclusion
We quickly have gone through an introduction to the Shipibo people, then to reflect their
current struggle between the worlds of traditional rainforest life and globalisation. After
revising two of their most common myths, especially regarding contact with white men, we
concentrated on transformed terminologies applied by the healer-witches, who still are the
most powerful promotors of ‘traditional’ cosmology.
Remembering the two examples for Shipibo myths, the Inca´s and the Píshtako´s, we shall
quickly recognize that even in past times the myth was never a permanent relate – on the
contrary: the semantic message about how to recognise and treat the others, be it white people,
Incas, other Indian tribes or mestizos, even demons, which is the main issue in most Shipibo-
4
Konibo myths, can be carried on orally in many a form. As long as a special myth-telling
syntax is maintained14, nearly any story can be recognized by an experienced Shipibo as a myth.
Shipibo-Konibo mythology in particular and mythology as a human social phenomenon in
general is to be interpreted as a guide-line for young participants in a society how to respond to
the unknown, the strange and the incomprehensible.
As the instruments of globalisation are introduced very sporadically in Native Indian
societies on the Ucayali river, mainly their effects are known – by television and relates of
travellers from the main regional cities. The Native Indians are therefore confronted with
stories that lie outside their comprehension and they have to include the rumours into a
conformist style, into traditional clothes that ban the danger and the incomprehensibility.
While the Píshtako of old, who killed with his mace, was finally outdone by a young Shipibo
hunter who was simply wittier, the modern demon with his economic seduction strategy also
finally gets trapped by the same smart Indian. What this means for the Indian´s daily life? –
Well, we can not know, it still is a myth.
Lima, 26/02/2005
Vienna, 24/03/2005
REFERENCES
ARÉVALO VALERA, Guillermo
1986: “El ayahuasca y el curandero Shipibo-Conibo del Ucayali (Perú).” in: América Indígena 46(1), p147-162
BRABEC, Bernd
2002: Ikaro. Medizinische Gesänge der Ayawaska-Zeremonie im oeruanischen Regenwald. Univ. master´s thesis, Wien.
CÁRDENAS TIMOTEO, Clara
1989: Los Unaya y su Mundo. Aproximación al Sistema Médico de los Shipibo-Conibo del Río Ucayali. (=Indigenismo y
Realidad 1), Lima.
COLPRON, Anne-Marie
1998: Le classification, l´utilisation et le symbolisme des plantes dans le chamanisme des Shipipo de l´Ucayali. Univ. PhD´s
thesis, Montreal.
CORTEZ MONDRAGÓN, María
2000: Introducción a la Comunicación Integral. Manual para docentes de los ISP EBI Educacion Bilingüe Intercultural. Lima.
ELIADE, Mircea
1951: Schamanismus und archaische Ekstasetechnik. Paris, german: Zürich 1957, 9th ed. Frankfurt a.M. 1997
(=suhrkamp taschenbuch wissenschaft 126).
GARCIA RIVERA, Fernando
1993 (ed.): Etnohistoria Shipibo (Tradición oral de los Shipibo-Conibo), Lima.
GEBHART-SAYER, Angelika
1985: “Why the Shipibo-Konibo (Eastern Perú) retain their Art.” Paper presented at the 45th International
Congress of Americanists, Bogotá.
1986: “Una terápia estetica, los diseños visionarios del ayahuasca entre los Shipibo-Conibo.” in: América Indígena,
46(1)
1987: Die Spitze des Bewußtseins. Untersuchungen zu Weltbild und Kunst der Shipibo-Conibo (=Münchener Beiträge zur
Amerikanistik), München.
5
ILLIUS, Bruno
1987: Ani Shinan. Schamanismus bei den Shipibo-Conibo (Ost-Peru). (=Ethnologische Studien 12), Tübingen, Univ.
PhD´s thesis, 2nd ed. Münster and Hamburg 1991.
1994a: “La Gran Boa: Arte y Cosmologia de los Shipibo-Conibo.”, in: Amazonia Peruana Vol.24, No.12, pp185212
1994b: Das Shipibo: Texte, Kontexte. Kommentare; Ein Beitrag zur diskursorientierten Untersuchung einer Montaña-Kultur.
Freiburg i. B.
LUNA, Luis Eduardo
1986: Vegetalismo. Shamanism among the Mestizo Population of the Peruvian Amazon. (=Acta Universitatis
Stockholmiensis; Stockholm Studies in Comparative Religion 27), Stockholm.
MORIN, Françoise
1998: “Los Shipibo-Conibo” in: SANTOS, F.; BARCLAY, F. (ed.) 1998: Guía etnográfica de la amazonía. Quito, pp275438
MINSA (MINISTERIO DE SALUD DEL PERÚ)
2002: Análisis de la situación de salud del pueblo Shipibo-Konibo. (= Serie Análisis de Situacion de Salud y Tendencias 5),
Lima
ORTIZ RESCANIERE, Alejandro
2001: Manual de Etnografía Amazónica. (= Colección Textos Universitarios) Lima.
RÄTSCH, Christian
1997: Enzykopädie der psychoaktiven Pflanzen. Botanik, Ethnobotanik und Anwendung. Aarau.
ROE, Peter G.
1979: “Marginal men: Male Artists among the Shipibo Indians of Perú”, in: Anthropologica. N.S. Vol. XXI, N° 2.
TOURNON, Jaques
2002: La merma mágica. Vida e historia de los Shipibo-Conibo del Ucayali. Lima.
1
The term “healer-witch” I have introduced here as a reflection of the spanish terms curandero and brujo or the
quite similarly applied shipibo words benshoamis joni and yobé which denominate the generally serving healer and the
antisocial witch respectively. In most cases, any ‘professional’ ayawaska drinker incorporates both personalities,
thus called here healer-witch.
2 I first elaborated my master´s thesis (BRABEC 2002), after about one year of fieldwork, then married my
Shipibo wife and kept my young family alive working as language teacher in Pucallpa for two more years, before
entering my current extensive fieldwork about the musical practises of Native Indians on the River Ucayali, which
was started in february 2004. All time long I was in direct contact with my wife´s big family, and beside my many
questions to everyone, my brothers-in-law, uncles and so on often opened their hearts to me, especially after the
collective ingestion of a few bottles of beer or large amounts of the traditional manioc-brew masato.
3 The finding of “gringo”-friends is a very important topic in Peruvian life in general, because marriage with a
westerner usually provides the easiest and often the only possible way of exiting the country and getting access to
higher education and better social standards respectively.
4 ... even if it was “66” or only some “6” in different numbers. Broad information about those fears was
provided by bilingual teacher Medardo Mori Silvano, personal communication.
5 Memories about mostly mestizo and white lumber traders who still exploit the Indian workforce as a very
cheap way to earn a lot of money seem to come up. For centuries Amazonian Indians have been the object of the
“abilitation method” (habilitación): the patrón provides food and tools and the Indian has to work for free
(sometimes for a lifetime) to get rid of the loan with extremely high interest rates.
The “stealing of culture and knowledge” is a very important hurde for any foreign scholar: very often indians
believe that all of their empiric knowledge will be written down, published and so “exploited”; the white scientist
gaining a significant amount of money (and converting into millionaire), while there is nothing left for themselves.
What has true roots gets ridiculously transformed by the Indian´s imagination.
6
6
A Collection of Shipibo myths can be found in GARCIA RIVEIRO 1993 (Shipibo-Konibo and Spanish) and
the appendix of GEBHART-SAYER 1987 (German). A brief but profund analysis about the myths and their
intercultural content can be found in ILLIUS 1994b (Shipibo and German).
7 This points towards a strange relation of inferiority and superiority. The Shipibo seem to be used by the Inca
and later by the white man like tools or domesticated animals. By the way Shipibo often call other Amazonian
ethnic groups inábo, which literally means “pet animals” – it is not surprising that they feel themselves inferior to
the Inca, as if they were the pets and in the same way superior to other groups, which then are regarded as the
Shipibo´s pets.
8 For the spelling of Shipibo-Konibo words we follow the normalized alphabet as pointed out in CORTEZ
MONDRAGÓN 2001 instead of following a more phonetic approach.
9 Pishtácu is a Kechua word and seems to refer to a quite old andean myth about a vampire-like demon.
Appearingly, in the andean region the reference of the Pishtácu to the modern white man is not drawn. However,
all over the upper Amazon basin, the reference appears, making it sometimes perilous for white tourists to travel
without guide in more remote areas. The Píshtako´s concept of taking away human fat and organs give way to a lot
of secondary myths, for example that airplanes work only when lubricated with human fat or that white people
with small genital organs can get a transplantation of a big (!) Shipibo penis. Some thruth might be hidden within:
there might be a black market for human organs (referring more to liver and lung than to genitals) and a
priviledged place to get “fresh organs for free” could be the remote jungle.
10 Ayawaska is usually cooked mixing water with at least two plants, the stem of the non parasite liana
banisteriopsis caapi and leaves of psychotria viridis, though many alternative or additional recipes are possibly used,
depending on the individual´s ways. The word “ayawaska” is Kechua and means literally “the vine of the dead”
and is used throughout the upper Amazon; however, quite every ethnic groups use a denomination in their
language, for example kamarampi in Ashéninka or oni in Shipibo-Konibo. Detailed information about its recipes
and chemistry can be found in RÄTSCH 1997 or COLPRON 1998.
Almost every male Indian has tried ayawaska at least once, save the growing fraction of strict evangelists. There
is a big group of mainly male Indians who drink ayawaska quite regularly but do not practice healing or
bewitching. The final healer-witches, about one out of 50 males, have undergone a long and arduos time of
abstinence or isolation in social, alimenticial, sexual and and psychic means. See also GEBHART-SAYER 1987,
ILLIUS 1987, 1994a and MORIN 1998. A more endemic and unquestionalby more prosaic explication about the
ayawaska art is given in AREVALO VALERA 1986.
11 As one can see for example in the development of the kené: although exclusively produced by women who
seldom or never drink ayawaska, the designs represent a basic aesthetic form perceived by an culturally adapt
ayawaska drinker. The ‘translation’ from drug experience to handicraft was done by the meraya, the master healer,
today rare if not even non-existing. The meraya sang keneki iká, songs to call the designs and then he cut what he
saw on tree barks which he handed over to the women (See ILLIUS 1987, GEBHART-SAYER 1985:12).
12 These creations stand between the metaphor and the neologism. Many spanish words are incorporated in
Shipibo tongue as such neologisms (aŝhemis joni: teacher; jema koshibo: village authorities, etc.). The neologisms used
in song seem much more lyrical and metophorical, i.e.: yami ewa roona (“mighty sounding metal”=airplane), koman
bimi joyota (“line of [tree-species] nuts”=machine gun bullets), inkan pino shetá (“Inca-colibri´s beak”=pen), yami
yeshkeyeshketai (“quickly spinning metal”=tape recorder), etc.
13 A deceased mestizo healer-witch from Pucallpa taught me a song which called for the Christian saint San
Pedro to come down and convert all present personnel (the healer-witch, his human disciples and spiritual entities)
into robots which then dismantle the “enemy spirits”. He also bestowed a division of paratroopers to surprise the
enemy at home.
14 See ILLIUS 1994b: This syntax also extends over paragraphs or side-stories. Many features like contrasting
characters and specific parallelisms have to be followed.
7